SWAMIS: Three Kings joined by Longhorn for Swamis

Try King Swami 1997-King Swami 1998. Mawk, the former, and Manhattan Transfer, the latter, will both board magic carpets bound for Franklin Field this weekend to do battle one more time. The two battled down to the wire last year. The race was decided by one game -- after writing a column praising Yale, Mawk picked, as he would say, Hawvawd in The Game. Manhattan Transfer selected Yale, and the rest is Swami history. "[Mawk] is so bitter that he didn't pick that team Yale," Manhattan Transfer said. "He was so chummy-chummy with [Yale coach] Jack Siedlecki, and what does he do in the last game? He backstabs them, and they backstab him. I got the win but Yale got the save if he had to get a boxscore on it. Oh, he dropped the ball." Mawk may have dropped the ball in 1998, but he did walk away with the better King Swami prize. "I took my win in stride, and gladly chugged the bottle of Long Island Iced Tea," Mawk said. "Given that I was too stupid to fail my last finance class and did graduate [precluding me from being a Swami this year], I'll just have to settle for bringing Manhattan Transfer down, and hope that the law school dean remembers my name when he gets to my application." Manhattan Transfer is confident that Mawk's hangover remains from his prize -- last year's top Swami got a table number from the DP Banquet and proclaims himself ready for any challenge to his crown. "Mawk threw the gauntlet," Manhattan Transfer said. "Maybe he'll win the battle, but I'll win the war. Maybe they still have some extra brooms [in the Bronx] and I'll sweep him the next five years, 10 years, 20 years, hopefully I have a long life. The Islanders will win before he has much success with me one-on-one on Homecoming Swami weekend. You can write that down." We did, and we also wrote down Mawk's prediction for this weekend's prognosticatory pugilism. "I would obviously bet the farm that I would beat Manhattan Transfer," Mawk said. "Unfortunately, I don't have a farm to bet.? Last I heard, he was in Sweden. He's from Switzerland, via Peru. What is he, coming in for the weekend?" He is indeed, as are some other noted Swami emeriti on their somewhat-more-aged carpets. Marv pays a visit to his son, the Pittsburgh Flash, who is now one of the DP's Weenies, also known as news writers. Thirty years ago, in 1969, Marv was the "top Swami." There was no King then, and there were no nicknames. There were no pictures above the Swamis' picks. Back then, the Swamis did not even all pick Penn on a weekly basis. "Friday, October 9, Penn was at Cornell," Marv said. "Out of nine people, seven picked Cornell, including all of the sports writers." Blasphemy! Marv, though, has learned the errors of his times, and has wisely selected the Quakers for this week's tussle with the Tigers. He is confident that he can top both King Swamis and make a triumphant return for himself. "That's very stiff competition," Marv said. "But there's something to be said for experience and I've been watching football a lot longer than they have." The only returning Swami not at the top of his Swami ranks makes the longest trip. But Longhorn has some experience with Homecoming and Princeton, as Keith Elias nearly attacked him at the Jadwin Airplane Hangar in 1994 after Longhorn had inscribed a worthy column trashing the current Indianapolis Colt, whose injury status last week, incidentally, was "Out, head." "I was always in the top quarter but I never won," Longhorn said. "I don't think Absolut [Longhorn's co-editor] ever won overall but she beat me my last year and I'm still ashamed about that." There was no shame for Longhorn in being a Swami, though. How could there be? "The best thing for me about being a Swami was my world notoriety," Longhorn said. "Everywhere I went, people knew who I was. I just had to put a towel around my head." Things have changed since even Longhorn's days in 1993. While we Swamis now channel our writings each week through one lone nut, Longhorn's band of Swamis wrote together and the times were full of alcoholic revelry and overall goodness. "We sort of instituted a 'drink while you write Swamis' program," Longhorn said. "Maybe that's because all our Swamis were a bunch of drunks." No matter when they were Swamis or how drunk they were while gazing into their crystal balls of Ivy, our Swamis who return to the Swami world headquarters this week all have one thing in common: good taste, if only in football teams. Mawk: "Penn, 99-Double Zero." Manhattan Transfer: "Penn, 27-10." Marv: "Penn, 24-16." Longhorn: "Penn, 22-20." That's Terrance Stokes' jersey number over Keith Elias' number -- jersey and IQ.